"Implicit Contracts, incentive compatibility, and involuntary unemployment" (MacLeod and Malcomson, 1989) remains our most highly cited work. We briefly review the development of this paper and of our subsequent related work, and conclude with reflections on the future of relational contract...

We investigate labor exchange teams in rural communities, which are prevalent in many developing countries. We show theoretically that these teams are beneficial to employers, who can outsource the monitoring of workers. Team members are incentivized to exert a high level of effort because any...

We investigate labor exchange teams in rural communities, which are prevalent in many developing countries. We show theoretically that these teams are beneficial to employers, who can outsource the monitoring of workers. Team members are incentivized to exert high effort because any deviation...

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to study the effect of a monitoring structure on the play of the infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. Keeping the stage game fixed, we examine the behavior of subjects when information about past actions is perfect (perfect monitoring), noisy but public...

This paper investigates the extent of the holdup underinvestment problem in a buyer-seller relationship in which the seller has private information about his alternative trading opportunities. Theory predicts that, compared with a situation in which outside options are publicly observed, the...

Interactions between players with private information and opposed interests are often prone to bad advice and inefficient outcomes, e.g. markets for financial or health care services. In a deception game we investigate experimentally which factors could improve advice quality. Besides advisor...